Fatty Liver – What It Is, How It Occurs, What Is the Treatment
An instant treatment for Fatty Liver
Current reports indicate that more than one-third of North Americans suffer from a fatty liver and left untreated it can progress to liver inflammation, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. Storing excess fat in your liver greatly increases your risk for diabetes, heart attack,
stroke, certain cancers, and premature death. Whilst those are usually unseen, obesity is another very visible symptom of a fatty liver.
However, fatty liver is a condition and not a disease and therefore can be treated without the need for expensive pills or surgery. It can be reversed.
So how does a fatty liver get fatty?
Carbohydrates are sugars that your body needs to survive. Before any carbohydrate can get into your bloodstream, it must first be broken down into a single sugar. Of all the types of sugars, only four (glucose, galactose, mannose, and fructose) can pass from your intestines to your liver. Of the four sugars, only one, glucose, can pass from the liver into the blood circulation.
Galactose and mannose are quickly broken down in your liver and do not reach your general circulation. Fructose is converted to glycogen, the storage form of sugar in your liver. However, the liver can store only so much glycogen; as soon as the glycogen stores are full, the fructose is then converted to a type of fat called triglycerides. If amounts of triglycerides accumulate in your liver, you develop a fatty liver.
How is it supposed to work?
Everyone understands that calories burnt should equal calories in (by eating or drinking). This would be a natural balance and is reflected in the liver’s conversion of fructose to either glycogen to be burnt as fuel or stored as fat in triglycerides. As the blood sugars drop, it calls for the triglycerides to be converted to glycogen and effectively burns off the stored fat. As blood sugars rise, there is no further call for glycogen and the liver converts the fructose to fat.
Here’s the Rub
The liver is effectively making either fuel or fat based on the blood sugar level. Having a fatty liver prevents the insulin receptors in your cells from responding to insulin which causes a rise in blood sugar which causes your pancreas to release more insulin which causes the liver to convert more sugar to fat (triglycerides) which fills your liver with fat to cause a Fatty Liver. You can see this is a self-fulfilling loop that can only end in serious medical problems if left unchecked.
If this process continues, you develop excess fat in your body, usually around the belly (leading to obesity), high blood sugar (leading to diabetes), high insulin and triglycerides levels (leading to heart attacks), and a greater risk of certain cancers and other diseases.
How to treat fatty liver
The liver will only burn off the fat if it is called to do so; that requires the blood sugar to be lower than the threshold where the body says it needs no more sugar. It does not need to be so low that the body craves sugar; this is often the idea behind sudden weight loss diets but it puts high stress on the liver and may only work for the short term.
Restricting carbohydrates is more effective than simply cutting calories or limiting fat intake for those who want to reduce the amount of fat in their fatty livers. In medical tests, low-carbohydrate diets lead to a greater reduction in fat from a fatty liver and longer-term sustained weight loss than low-calorie diets.
This is because the lowering of carbohydrates, especially those that generate fructose makes a slower but sustainable way of asking the liver to burn fat to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. The purpose of restricting carbohydrate intake is to maintain a non-high blood sugar level so that the liver burns off slowly more fat than it stores. This will always lead to a slow but consistent weight loss until you reach your ideal in-balance weight.
How can we do this?
The full details of what foods and drinks can be consumed as normal and reduce a fatty liver are outlined in a holistic treatment guide for fatty liver called the Ezra Protocol. It outlines the foods that boost blood sugar more than others, and those that can easily be replaced with other common foods items so that your diet is about maintaining a healthy blood sugar level rather than trying to starve yourself.
Some quick tips that anyone can use to reduce a fatty liver are:
- Avoid all sugared drinks
- Reduce Fruit juice
- Table sugar
- Reduce foods made from flour
- Eat plenty of vegetables, berries, beans, nuts
- Eat fish
- Reduce meat, especially cured meats
Note the comments to reduce rather than cut out. This is important as I explain elsewhere.
